Exchange Resources

6th - 25th November, 1995

Memory and knowledge. 

 Susan Greenfield concluded that the new research points out that each brain makes a personal universe. If it reminds you of Nicholas de Cusa (1440) or John Carson (1976) it is acceptable. 

One difference between the two is, that the medieval thought was rooted in a belief ( there is no way to prove or disprove the assumption ), whereas the 20th research investigated the various functions of the (damaged) brain in the area of vision/sight. It was of particular interest to me that  the recent research evaluates the role of knowledge and memory as crucial for the construct of reality. (In extending the point, memory and knowledge ought to be crucial for constructing a meaning of a work of art.) So much so, that what we perceive or pay attention to, is determined by our memory and knowledge. I recall, of course the seminal work by Nietzsche on the idea of perspectivism. In the mind of Niels Bohr it became the Law of Complementarity. Both say that what I know is relative to my perspective upon reality. I take the “perspective” to be made up of memory and knowledge. It sounds circular – knowledge determined by knowledge – but of course the two are not the same.  Instead, the process is akin the theory of signature or homeopathy.  It indicates a chain, a string, in which members appear similar but are not identical. This is not a mind boggling proposal. The other aspect of perspectivism, the proposal that the “ house of being” ( Nietzsche) may be built from the perspective of any observer, is not only an apology for art, but also its strongest support.You will be used to arguments based on art centres, artists’ influences, as well as on the (helpless) subjectivity of contemporary art “ which has nothing to say” etc. However – what is less recognized are the memes that artists operate and the implications of mutations of inherited models both in art practice and art discourse. The memes for interpreting a work of art may come from several sources: I value encounters with a work of art when I do not need the artist’s, the curator’s or art critic’s assistance I value the dynamics of play.

EXCHANGE RESOURCES ( November, 1995) at Catalyst Arts offered space to twenty seven artists. My memory ( a store with a code) recalls with particular strength Mutus Liber, A Garoglio, R. Martel,V Grimm, L.Wolffler and Yaeko Osono – not necessarily in that order. I am about (17/08/00) to think again – what memories and knowledge were activated and by what.

“I was sorry to have missed the performance of the blood dripping”(Martha Wilson). This relates to  “DANGER – you are approaching MEXICAN Territory “ by an artist from Mexico City LORENA WOLFFLER. The day long performance consisted of the artist lying on her back, her hands tied to a table. Blood dripped onto her stomach, each drop exploding  either on her skin or on the scant drapery. Her body got colder and wetter in the cold room. She took short breaks to dry herself quickly. Separated from the other room by a heavy blanket ( a warm wrap for absent door contrasted with the cold surrounding the living body) the performance evoked an analogy either of a prison (torture)or a (dysfunctional) hospital ( bed +drip). The insecure reading received a direction from language: a taped monotonous female voice repeated the warning of the work’s title. In it the word “Mexican”, normally used with some probable pride to describe a shared identity, obtained a meaning more like “ full of land mines” or “ saturated by villains”.

While the meme of danger depends on the viewer’s memory of danger, dangerous objects or situations, the positive or negative construct of the meme “Mexican” depends on the knowledge of Mexico present and past, namely, the economic crisis now, the uneasy relationship with the USA, the weight of the past. The warning is not designed to stop you entering Mexico, which in itself is impossibility for the viewer in Belfast anyway. So what is its role when it is uprooted from its home setup? If it is not meant to stop me going to Mexico, maybe it is not meant to stop me entering the dangerous territory either. At that point the warning slips into an invitation for either an adventure or a risk taking exploration of the territory’s energy. It may explode, it may swallow you, you may never return to the entry point or find an exit. The dangerous territory is the quotidian existence with the heroism absent. Instead, the presence of blood invites the memory of blood sacrifice ( Maya and Aztec ceremonies for the Sun God) as well as torture. Moreover, as the body “ collects” the drops of blood it functions as a receptacle for the time, for the blood dripping from bodies as well as into bodies. The body works as the duality of a victim and an accuser. It is the viewer’s responsibility to decide which is which and when. We are enticed to enter the danger zone and to abandon the  non involvement, the relativism, the insecurity of our knowledge. The performance demanded  that Wolffler’s business becomes the viewer’s business. Tolerance of blood dripping danger becomes – so near one’s own skin- unethical. Although it was rooted in Mexican conditions it was not difficult to relate to the constellation of conditions in Northern Ireland.

The performance achieved its goals superbly and simply. It raised not simple but complex memes of relationships amongst people, in that it was anthropocentric.  The memes were those known to us from histories anywhere, especially, although not exclusively, from the history of 20th C. The work anticipated the century’s gruesome end, i.e. Bosnia and Kosovo for the Europeans,  Rwanda  or East Timor for others. There was another aspect of this performance: ( viz Derrida: signifier containes something that functions as signified) the passive female body subjected to the adverse conditions evoked questions about women, religion, symbols, ethics, power and life and death.  In that the work seamlessly joined social history and personal responsibility. 

VERENA GRIMM(Mexico City)  made an installation titled EXILE. It consisted of two matraces placed next to each other covered with handmade candles bought at a country market in Mexico. One set of candles was pristinely white, the other had burnt wicks. Grimm chose the bed as an object you loose when you become an exile. In exile people have to replace it. Bed is an object connected to life ( lovemaking, birth, nurturing, caring in illness) and death ( deathbed, dying, being severely ill=bedbound, bedridden). Bed is centrally connected to the place we call home. Candles connect with memories, memories of departure ( temporary or not), with cemeteries, churches, town squares, windows etc. Candles are metafors for life, in many cultures there are stories about a candle that is about to burn out signifying death. A hero adds another new candle thus prolonging someone’s life. 

Consequently both beds and candles have dual meanings.  Beds with candles suggest loss and replacement as a constant flux of renewal in general and loss in particular. Beds and candles also denote togetherness and memories. Grimm used burnt candles believing that they would work as a sign for absence that gives pain. Burnt candles had the job of signifying the suffering    created by the absence of somebody you love and who is exiled as well as the pain experienced by those who were forced to leave their families. I guess such a meaning would depend on the relationships within a given family. The white candles, on the other hand, introduced elements of purity, innocence, expectations and also energy not yet wasted or misused.

Grimm’s installation silently destroyed the complacent world spiking it onto the fragments of memories nad knowledge of insatiable desire to have power of truth and others. An intrinsic part of that desire has been – all over the world – preference for violence. Grimm replicated an opposite meme that of silent resistance and death, not with Tolstoy’s acceptance, though. The works antropocentric basis is run, as if by a remote control. Things switch on either as metaphors or synecdoche to ground our attention to the suffering of displaced persons. Yes, there is inner emmigration to consider, but this work is not dealing with that. Visually, the installation was quite moving, inspite of the simplification of its theme. Or – because of it?

Our memory, and particularly our visual memory appear  short – lived. Look away from this text. Your visual system will lose the memory of this page. If so – the need to re-introduce known fragments of the world visually becomes a condition sine qua non of our visual literacy. In this, visual arts are like music. If I don’t pay attention what I hear, the music falls into a bundle of background noise. Both Mexican artists increased the practical possibility of the viewer’s focusing on ethical issues of the century by re –introducing known memes. By positioning the problems to one part of the world they created a necessary curiosity that had the power to induce attention and a recognition of one’s moral position. In turn, their strategies encroached on the indefinite postponement of the construct of meaning by slipping the “they” where “us”or “me” could be.Vis a vis the wet and cold body or the burnt and new candles I had to face my own morality. Am I able to stand up to the violent person, violent people, inadequate law or intimidation? The meaning permanently slides from the intended narrative ( Mexico) without preference for any of the variants. 

That stability may be neither obtainable nor sustainable had been selected by RICHARD MARTEL  in his installation “Vers une stabilite hypnotique”.  The camera recorded a person walking on pebbles, seven monitors recounted it for us. While the camera was the unreliable witness, the monitors were even less reliable storytellers. The pebbles were beautiful, the walk had no beginning and no end. The relentness walk had been undermined by such an insecurity of the goal, direction, reason etc that the meaning depended on my submission to the rhythm and sound of the steps. By paying attention to nonvisual part of the visual art I postponed the focus onto the visual  in the way I do when I look up from the work at the clouds on the Eastern sky. Their hypnotic power is greater than my work. Aesthetics ( and art) operates as resistance to the expected value. I pay attention to what Martel chose for me to pay attention to. Before that, he had to pay attention to what he wanted to select. Before that he did not know how he looked walking on the pebbles. While the narrative aspect ( the walk) is pretty commonplace both as an act and as a memory, the attention paying process involved is not. In its three stages it moves from not knowing to some degree of manipulation of the knowledge of the other. The seven variants on seven monitors are not totally different. By letting the same cooperate with the different Martel provides a flip over from narrative to experience. Hypnotic? Not really. Poetic? Yes. The question is – what threshold do I have to cross over  to move from  the ordinary to the  poetic?

Some of the questions and answers were present in the work of Italian artists Tiziana Arnaboldi, Rosaria Galeone and Paolo Salvadore di Leonardo ( who was still alive then). They operated under the group name MUTUS LIBER. They evoked memes from the Clasical Greek culture, Renaissance, modern understanding of geometry, astronomy, geography, as well as that of anamorphism.  Pharmakon consisted of drawings and sculpture, its composition aligned to the North Star and the South Cross Star. Two anamorphic female angels were drawn towards the apex of an imagined lunette. Next to one there was a drawing of a boat. In front of the drawings there was a delicate carving on a marble mortar used originally in a pharmacy. Hence the title of the work – pharmakon. The word means “ drug”, in the artists thought the dual meaning of this word was essential. A healing substance or a poison, or poisonous substance used to heal.  While the anamorphism and miniature targeted our memories of seeing, looking at, (there was a magnifying glass permanently attached to the mortar), the angels were supposed to work as mediators between ordinary and spiritual realms. The anamorphic drawing made the recognition of the figures difficult and dependent on the viewing point. To a certain measure, the two female figures invited a parallel to the two female artists as mediators. The boat, an archetypal image for transcending from one state of being to another, is also a direct tool for a journey, if a journey between ordinary and spiritual is worthwhile considering. It is available, but not in use. The mortar acts as an anchor of either a start of the process or end of it, depending whether the composition is read from the left or right edge.  The artists aimed at displacement of the memories we brought in front of the work. Mutus Liber believed that seeing is like dreaming at the point of awakening:”… dreams clinging to the dawn…” Why should we wish to replace our memories and knowledge by theirs?  Mutus Liber thought that such an act will allow us to create a “ healthy vital rhythm”. They said that Pharmakon offered synergy of healing and poisoning to cure the body of “ill memories”.

Going back to their earlier thought about seeing being like dreaming. We cannot escape from our dreams. Pharmakon had the power to rebuilt one’s house of being  for that moment. Its fragile fragments joined, intertwinned and transformed themselves in a visual experience saturated with light. The light was emanating from it, not unlike colours emanate from Matisse’s canvas. 

A visit into their universe was a welcome nurture for this viewer’s soul wounded by the general helplesness of good against the evil. On rational level – some cures ( e.g. for cancer) are so poisonous that they make you more ill. Pharmakon did not.

dr Slavka Sverakova